Advice for a patient with gonorrhoea sent by Thomas Davidson, an apothecary in Edinburgh, 24 March 1568. This letter was probably sent to William Douglas, Laird of Lochleven. The patient was too far from Edinburgh to send a urine sample. Davidson died in 1574 and his registered will includes a full inventory of his apothecary…
A Dundee merchant’s letter offering dress fabrics, June 1573 Peter Clayhills wrote to Agnes Leslie, Lady Lochleven, sending her order of fabrics. He offered her summer dress fabrics, and velvet from the stock that had ‘come home’, and cloth he expected to arrive at midsummer. One fabric was 'very light for gowning in summer'. This…
Grace Mildmay's interest in physic has been described by Linda Pollock. Her daughter Mary Fane, Countess of Westmorland is rather less well-known, except for her letter to Secretary Windebank in May 1639 urging peace with Scotland, which has been published many times. Her eldest daughter Grace married James, Earl of Home in 1626, after the death of…
Buying timber for building in early seventeenth-century Scotland: from Sweden or on the shore of Leith. Much timber for furniture and building was imported from Norway and Baltic sources and ports, as far east as Königsberg, now Kaliningrad in Russia.[1] Imported timber for Edinburgh and the Forth valley was stored and sold at the ‘Tymber…
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